Avis Blackthorn: Is Not an Evil Wizard! (27 page)

“I want to get Robin something special,” I
told her. “You know, for his heroics…”

“Aw, your such a cutie…” she said pulling
closer a copy of the Herald. We flicked through the paper and she
showed me lots of stuff at the back with tiny order forms. “These
catalogues are my favourite, I was obsessed as a kid!”

I had to admit, my attention was caught by
the many Magical things that the back of the newspaper housed. A
few things that caught my attention like:

Tait’s Walking Bookcase, have your books
nearest you at all times! This Bookcase folds up into a piece of
wood big enough to fit in a breast pocket. When tapped will open
out into full-size, thus allowing all your books to follow you
wherever you go.

“I’d like that!” said Tina, her eyes
wide.

I couldn’t help a smile. “I was just about to
say that…”

“Or what about this…” she said pointing.

We sat and had a think. I couldn’t order
anything from the Herrald as I had lost all my gold on the train
here. But then I kept getting this thought, tickling my brain -
when I walked through the passage way towards the Book of Names,
there were rooms to the left and right stacked with goodies and
treasures, Tina didn’t need convincing.

“Got the key still?” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “But what if Mal… what
if
he’s
down there?”

“Pfft… do really think he will be?” she said
laughing.

As we left the Chamber, I saw David
Starlight, sitting quietly on his form table doing homework, he
caught my eye and grimaced, looking away quickly.

Tina unlocked the door and slipped inside as
the cold, damp draft hit us. She held tightly to me as we went down
through the blackness. Soon enough, we stood in the small, cramped
room to the left. It took Tina over five minutes to find a Spell
that would illuminate the room. Finally, one worked. Small clear
stones dotted in the walls all the way around lit with dim, pulsing
white light. “Hmm interesting…” she said.

“Why?” I couldn’t see what was so
interesting, the light wasn’t even very bright.

“Well, Wizards stopped using Quartz to light
a room about two hundred years ago… this room must be blooming
old!”

Tina began pulling the dusty rags off with
gusto. This caused plumes of century-old dust to erupt
everywhere.

“Ahh!” I cried coughing.

“Oh give over, you baby!” she laughed.

But once we had a look, we realised this
really was a treasure trove of stuff that Malakai, or whoever else,
had collected.

“Don’t touch anything,” said Tina. “On pain
of death.”

“Ok… what the heck’s that?” I said, looking
at a tall thing that looked a food blender.

“That looks like a
Dehouser
,” said
Tina with awe. “It makes a house collapse in on itself and collects
it into a tiny ball. Look! There’s some inside.” There sure was, it
looked like some sort of gum ball machine.

“Oh wow!” I said picking up what looked like
a pair of dirty old shoes.

“What?” said Tina.

“These…” I said, unable to believe what I was
seeing. “These are a pair of Seven League Shoes!”

“No way!” she said, grabbing them to take a
look.

She turned them over, the soles were covered
in the number seven, and inside had a label:
Seven League Shoes,
use me carefully.

“They don’t make these anymore! There’s only
seven made, in the whole world! My Dad’s always wanted a pair…”

“Avis…” said Tina looking at something. “I
think I’ve found the perfect present for Robin.”

Soon enough, all our lessons had resumed.
Things had got back to as normal as normal could be.

I was back in my dorm room with the other
Condor boys. Back in that comfy bed, homework by the fireside,
communal trips to dinner and ridiculous chats about boy things.

“You and this Tina are a item yes?” said
Jake, smiling at me across the fireside. All the boys looked up
over their parchment, smirking.

“Pfft,” I said. “Naa, we’re just friends.”
But my face burned red.

“Well, if you are just friends you won’t mind
if I ask her out then?” he said.

I hope he was joking because I felt a jealous
monster rise in my stomach at the thought. All the boys were silent
for a moment. Then, the git laughed. “Your face!”

“You sod…” was all I could manage in a small
voice, but relief flooded back through me.

“Well, Hunter’s doing pretty well for
himself,” said Graham. “In fact, it’s caused a bit of tension in
classes. He’s been seeing Jess and Florence at the same time.”

I gasped. “No way! Where is he now?”

“Probably trying to apologise to them both!”
said Graham as the boys laughed.

There was a moment of pens scratching across
parchment, before Jake looked up at me again. “So… if your friends
with Tina Partington, you must have some
insider knowledge
about Ernest Partington?” All eyes looked up, except Robin who
smiled wryly over his homework.

Dennis crooned. “Ah, I wish I was Ernie’s
friend… do you think you can introduce me Avis?”

I laughed. “I’ll see what I can do Dennis.”
Simon didn't look up, he was jealous, I just knew it.

“How well do you know him?” Graham placed his
parchment down and was leaning forwards. I pretended to scratch
away at my homework, being all mysterious, but the truth was I
hadn’t thought up what to say. How much did I tell them?

“Bah…” I said eventually. “Not that well,
just, you know, when he was a ghost… and er that’s it really.”

Jake placed his homework down now. “So, you
knew him when he defeated Malakai?”

“Erm… sort of…” I muttered, looking at Robin
for help.

“Because,” Graham said. “I remember when you
said you could see Malakai out the window that time.”

Jake narrowed his big eyes at me. “Yeah, and
we was all talking and wondering about you when you disappeared
after that
accident
with Hunter.”

Graham nodded fervently. “And Hunter said
himself, in so many words, that it wasn’t you that attacked him,
but someone else… someone he wasn’t allowed to say?”

“What are you suggesting?” Simon said,
turning on Graham. “That Avis was framed by Malakai, so teamed up
with a ghost to defeat the most evil Wizard of all kind?” he
scoffed.

“All I’m saying is, if it was Malakai who
attacked Hunter, that means Avis was blamed for attacking Hunter,
even though it was easy for the Magisteers to work out that he
didn’t do it! And we were all led to believe it was him… I mean it
made sense at the time, he was talking about all these evil
plans.”

“And, he vanished somewhere during the
Riptide match, even though the exits was sealed off… the night that
Ernest came back to life…” said Jake.

“I am here you know…”

Jake turned back to me. “I know you are. I am
just saying that we are not stupid, we have all spotted these… what
you call them?” he clicked his fingers trying to find the word.

“Anomalies?” Simon offered.

“Yes, these anomalies… we’ve all noticed. We
just want to know the truth.”

“Come on guys,” said Robin. “Let’s just
chill, I’m sure Avis will tell you what happened in time…”

“Yeah I know,” said Graham, sitting back.
“Sorry mate didn’t mean to get carried away like that. It’s just,
you know, you can tell us - we are your form. We’re not gonna say
nothing…”

I nodded and soon enough the scratching of
homework restarted, a little tenser than before. My mind was
working overtime not to compromise the story. I’d worked so hard
making up Ernie’s story, that I had had completely forgotten about
my own.

Partington was in an immensely good mood and
taught us lots of brilliant stuff, preparing us for our second year
at Hailing Hall. Over the remaining weeks our lessons began winding
down with more free time. Which was nice, because me, Robin, Tina
and Ernie would meet up out of our respective classes and go for
walks round the grounds, have dinner together and go to the weekly
Riptide match. I liked the routine.

Partington told us that, in our second year,
he would only be our form tutor. We would be going off to have
lessons with lots of new Magisteers and learn loads of new,
exciting things. Everyone was sad, but he reassured us that we
would see him every morning for form.

Just before dinner that night, in the Condor
dorm, I told Robin to wait behind.

“What? What is it?” Robin said, looking
worried.

I laughed. “Nothing to worry about mate.”

“Oh right,” he said. “Good, no more drama
please.”

“I erm, just wanted to give you this,” I
pulled out the little wrapped parcel from under my bed and gave it
to him.

“For me? Why?”

“Why?
Why
? For saving my life? For
bringing back two dead people in record time!” I said as he smiled.
He took the parcel and unwrapped it, pulling out a pair of old,
wire framed spectacles.

“Now, they don’t look like much,” I said.
“But these are a pair of…”

“I know what they are,” he gasped. “Wow,
thank you mate, but… where did you get them?”

“Secret. I just never got to properly thank
you, cos’ you know you were the
real saviour
that night. If
it hadn’t been for you… well.”

He swapped his glasses for the spectacles.
“Woah!” he called, jumping backwards. “Weird! I couldn’t wear these
all the time!”

“I know right, weird aren’t they!” I’d tried
them on in the passageway. When you put them on, they revealed
every bit of Magic that had been done in the vicinity. The most
recent Magic shows up bright and colourful, whereas historical
Magic shows up faded and grey. It makes your eyes hurt seeing all
the bright colours of recent Magic, but immensely useful and cool
if you know what your looking at.

A week later, I was down at Breakfast early.
Me and Tina had agreed to go out in the grounds together all day.
Just me and her. I met Tina in the empty hall. She was looking very
casual in a pink hoodie and her hair perched up on the top of her
head.

“Your late…” she said.

It was a hot and sunny all day. We found a
spot by the lake and lay in the sun, chatting and watching the
ducks.

“What a year,” said Tina. “That curse he put
me in, did I tell you, I could hear what people said to me,
sometimes.”

“Really?” I said, feeling my face grow red.
“What was it like? Being cursed I mean?”

“It was
weird
,” she said gravely. “I
was in this horrible, nightmarish place, completely on my own. It
was all grey, and dusty with rivers made of black gunge. And then
these bars would just fall down and I’d be trapped in this tiny
prison cell. But sometimes I’d wake up and hear people. But I
couldn’t open my eyes, or move, or talk… I never want to be cursed
again.” She looked up at the bright blue sky wincing. “Never
thought I’d see that again… thought I was gonna stay like that. No
offence, but I didn’t think you’d work out a plan like that, and…
die for me.”

“Yeah well, like I said, I owed you.”

She smiled her brilliant shining smile. “Come
on, lets go for a dip!”

“Erm…” I said, looking at the big, cold
river.

“Where’s your adventure?” she clicked her
fingers and a rope appeared, attached to the tall tree above. Then,
she jumped on the rope and swung in a high arch through the sky.
She let go at the height of the arch and soared through the air,
hitting the water with a gigantic SPLASH!

“Get in Avis!” she called bobbing above the
surface.

I had to really didn’t I? I tried to look
cool as I soared through the air. And failing as all the water went
up my nose. Tina laughed.

We bobbed in the cold water and I tried my
best to stop my teeth chattering. “It feels amazing to have Ernie
back you know,” she said. “Some people say you shouldn’t mess with
the dead, but… this felt like the right thing to do.”

“I know what you mean,” I shivered. “Erm…
there aren’t any dangerous things in this water are there?” I swear
I felt something touch my leg.

“I don’t know how I can ever thank you
enough…” she came closer.

“You don’t need to,” I said. “This is
enough.” My heart was hammering so hard.

“I don’t know how you thought of it all and…
had the courage to face him like that. I just froze.”

For the rest of the day we lay, drying off on
the grass together. As we lay, the noise of people playing outside
the school drifted through the air. Tina’s hand slowly found
mine.

The next afternoon, me, Robin and Tina met up
for Dinner in the Chamber. Ernie had loved his new found fame at
first, but now I was sure he was using Magic to evade being seen by
anyone. “If I have to sign another autograph I will spontaneously
combust!” he said. “I am sure I signed Arthur Cook’s book twenty
times already!”

Then, a shadow fell over our table, as Ross
followed by Hamish and Gascoigne, stood over us with a strange
glare in his eyes.

“You happy with yourself?” he said a little
loudly. “Hanging around with the
enemy
.”

“Enemy?” said Robin.

“Cork it lamppost!” said Ross, as people in
the Chamber started looking round. “Yeah, the
Partington’s
…”
he pointed at Tina.

I whacked his arm away. “Don’t point at
her.”

“And that
Ernie
. He’s the one who… to
Malakai… what do you think our parents will think? Think they’ll be
happy with you hanging around with
him
?”

I stood up slowly, my head barely up to his
shoulders. “I don’t care what they think… strikes me, he did us a
favour.”

“Yeah, and how do you work that out, runt
boy?” Ross looked really angry, his eye was twitching.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” said Tina.